


I Know, You Know

by kikitheslayer



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Best Friends, Childhood Friends, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack treated like worryingly seriously, F/M, First Kiss, Getting Together, Psych AU!, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-07-11 23:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19936453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikitheslayer/pseuds/kikitheslayer
Summary: Ellie Miller's life recently collapsed. Maybe that goes a little ways towards explaining why she lies to the police about being a psychic.Doesn't explain how she got a job, though.





	I Know, You Know

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished Broadchurch, and while I liked it, the whole time I was thinking "Hmm... it's no Psych!" Well, now it is. Now it is Psych.

_Flashback to my mistakes_  
_My rebounds, my earthquakes_  
_Even in my worst lies, you saw the truth in me_  
_And I woke up just in time_  
_Now I wake up by your side_  
_My one and only, my lifeline_

_[...]_

_Say my name and everything just stops_  
_I don't want you like a best friend._  
— Taylor Swift, "Dress"

\--

Hardy picked the phone up after one ring. “I’m busy,” he greeted.

Miller tended to show a blatant disregard for his working hours, a habit which was either endearing or annoying depending on the day. That afternoon he had been doing little more than refreshing his emails and mindlessly playing virtual solitaire, which made a call from Miller a welcome reprieve.

Not that he would be telling her that.

Miller bulldozed past his token resistance. “I’m in a situation,” she said.

Hardy instantly recognized the hints of panic in her voice: a high-pitched, fast tone mitigated by a steel edge of control.

Hardy had leaned back when he had answered the phone. Now, he shot up. “What do you mean? Are you all right?”

When she didn’t answer, he hazarded, “It’s nothing to do with — ?”

“No,” she interrupted, her words coming quick again, “nothing like that. It’s all my own bloody doing.”

Hardy was stuck in an awkward position: sitting but halfway to grabbing his coat off the back of his chair and making a run for the door. “Well, spit it out, Miller.”

“Don’t freak out.”

“I think I’ll decide whether to freak out for myself, thank you.”

A heavy sigh crackled through the phone line. “I lied to the police,” Miller said finally. “And I think I sort of got a job.”

Hardy careened upwards in one motion, slapping a hand on his desk as he stood. “You _what_?”

“Oh, I can’t talk about this over the phone,” said Miller. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Tell your boss you’re taking lunch.” And with that, she hung up.

\--

Miller hadn’t been lying about the lunch part; she arrived with fish and chips. She set them next to her on Hardy’s thin couch, spreading the wrappings as a makeshift plate.

She offered him a packet with just chips, which he accepted and then neglected on his desk in favor of pacing the length of his small office.

“Are you going to do that the whole time?” Miller asked, her mouth full of fish.

“I’ll sit down when you have no longer committed perjury.” He waved a hand. “Start at the beginning.”

“Well, I had the telly on while I was tidying up, and I saw that there was an interview with that shopkeep who got robbed. I don’t know if you saw, it was in the papers yesterday. But he kept contradicting himself. Plus he wouldn’t look the interviewer in the eyes. So I called the station and told them that they should look into him.” Her volume rose. “Next thing I know I’m getting asked down to the station, and an officer’s telling me that the man had a partner and that my intel is looking awfully suspicious.”

Hardy groaned into his hands. “Oh, the bloody tips!”

She glowered. “Say ‘I told you so’ louder.”

“I did!” he cried. “I told you someone was going to get the wrong idea.”

“Well, now is hardly the time to gloat! I couldn’t just — …oh, bollocks.” She had dripped tarter sauce onto her pants. She dabbed at the stain with a serviette.

Hardy paused. “Do you have to do that now?” 

“I’m nervous,” she replied, but she set down the fish and turned fully toward him. Instead, she grabbed the couch’s lone throw cushion and hugged it to her chest. “So, I’m looking for a way to explain it. And I tried to tell the truth and say, ‘Look, I’m just a very observant person, not to mention none of these robberies were carried out by geniuses, exactly.’ But they just didn’t believe me. And they kept saying things — Hardy, they knew about the car I stole when I was 18!”

“So you lied to the police because you thought the fact that you stole a car in Year 13 to impress a boy was enough to put you away? What did you even tell them?”

She flapped her hands nervously. “Oh, you’re going to hate this.”

His voice was dead serious. “I’m sure I am. What did you say?”

Miller continued slowly. “Well, right when I walked in I could see the desk of the copper who booked me. And it was all full of crystals and good luck charms, stuff like that. So when I was looking for something to say in the interrogation room, it just sort of… came out.”

Hardy leaned against his desk and leveled his glare at her. “What came out?”

“That I’m a psychic.” Miller looked down, idly tracing a finger around the outline of the drying stain on her pant leg. She waited for Hardy to curse, to yell, but it never came.

Instead, after several seconds, he said, “…Are you having me on?”

She looked up. “What?”

“Has this whole thing just been a joke for you? Because it’s not funny, Miller, I’ve got work to do —"

“Hardy, do you think I would lie to you about this?” She threw her arms wide, and the pillow toppled off of her lap to the floor. “This?”

He faltered. “But… you…” His words were imbued with a dawning horror. “No.”

She nodded.

“You really —" He frowned. “But that’s just nonsense.”

Miller suddenly felt as though she was going to laugh. As though she was going to laugh and laugh and never stop. She managed to only give in to a small smile as she said in a subdued voice, “I know! It’s ridiculous! And the worst part is, they believed me! I was expecting them to toss me in a cell right then for wasting police time, but they just let me out!”

Suddenly, Hardy was smiling too. He bent at the waist, shaking with silent laughs, and Miller joined him. “You — they believed that you’re a psychic,” he choked out.

“Yeah!”

They laughed for several moments more before Hardy said, “Now, wait, wait, wait, what’s this then about a job?”

“Oh!” Miller nearly clapped her hands. “That’s the best part. The Super asked me to consult on a missing persons case they’re working. _As a psychic_.”

His brow furrowed. “What do the police want a bloody psychic for?”

“I said. To solve crimes.” Her voice popped up a bit. “I’m a psychic detective, sort of.”

“But —" All traces of mirth had left his face. His voice sounded very unsteady. “You’re not going to do it. Right?”

Miller sucked in a breath. “That’s where I think it gets tricky. The Super made it sound like… like if I didn’t do it, she might not believe the psychic story anymore.”

Hardy rubbed both hands over his face. “Oh, Miller, what have you gotten into?”

“Well, don’t look at me like that!” she replied. “You weren’t in that interrogation room. Being treated like a bloody accomplice just because I solved the thing before they did. I couldn’t go and get arrested, I had the boys to think about!”

“What’s going to happen to the boys when you get arrested for lying to the police!” Hardy cried, gesturing with one outstretched hand. He took a deep breath. “This is serious, Miller. Letting the lie get bigger… At least with the other thing they’d have let you out when they realized their mistake.”

The familiar anger rising in Miller’s breast was comforting after the morning of uncertainty. Arguing with Hardy, she could do that. Had been doing it forever, more or less. She pointed at him accusingly. “You think I wanted to wait for them to clear me? That could take days, and it means missing work at the chip shop, and it means hiring a lawyer, and it means my boys see another parent in a prison cell! Tom only just came ‘round on me, what do you think he’s gonna say if I send his dad packing and then go and get locked up myself? This isn’t some decision I just made all willy-nilly.”

“Oh, I’m glad you were thinking clearly, then, when you told the police you could read minds!”

“Oh, don’t be a knob about this, it’s already done.” She settled back into the couch, arms crossed. She picked the fish back up. It was cold, now, but that didn’t stop her.

Hardy was silent for a few moments before he ducked his head and rubbed at his eyes. He sighed. Several more seconds passed before he looked up. He blinked at her. In a quieter voice, he said, finally, “What are the police even doing, hiring a psychic? They must now there’s no scientific merit to that.”

Miller shrugged. She matched the volume of his tone. “I don’t think the Super really thinks I am a psychic. But missing persons, we haven’t had one of those in Broadchurch in ages. I think she’s just willing to try anything.”

Hardy offered a weak smile. “You’ve called in six tips in the last two months, Miller. Probably willing to try anything to get you working for her.”

Miller didn’t reply. She stood up, crossed to the trash can by the door, and threw away the empty chip wrappings. “Hardy,” she said, still not looking at him, “what do I do?”

He tried to make his tone authoritative. “Go have a look around. Tell the police some small piece of information. Then back out before they start asking questions.”

She looked his way. “Will you help me, then?”

It took him a moment before he gave in. Grimacing, he answered, “Oi, fine. But not while I’m supposed to be working here. Or seeing Daisy.”

She smiled.

\--

They solved the case.

They stood side by side, poses just the same (straight legs, arms crossed), in the dingy little police station hallway, watching the culprit make a full confession through the two-way mirror. They watched as the officer working the case, recent American transplant DI Lassiter, nodded and stopped the tape. They watched as the culprit was escorted out of the room, presumably to a cell.

DI Lassiter lingered for a moment as he was leaving. He looked as though he was thinking of saying something. Finally, he just said, “Good work. Bring it up with payroll,” and pushed his way out of the door.

Miller thought back to his shocked expression when the Super had introduced them.

 _“I don’t know how you do things here in Britain —”_ he had said.

 _“Better learn then,”_ Hardy had interrupted.

“I don’t think he likes us very much,” Miller commented.

Hardy hummed in agreement.

The two remained still, looking into the now empty room.

Finally, Hardy said, “So, are you done with this…” he gestured broadly at the interrogation room while trying to think of a word that didn’t reflect the dishonesty of the situation, “…job, then?” He shook the tension out of his shoulders. “You’ve proven your abilities, and the Super can’t make you work against your will.”

Miller said nothing.

He glanced side-long at her. “No.”

She still wouldn’t look at him, but he turned fully toward her, dragging a hand along the ledge under the window.

“Miller. No.”

“I think…” she said slowly, “that this is something I can do.”

“You can do a lot of things, Miller.” His voice was low, almost pleading.

She finally looked at him. Her face was soft, devoid of the anger she so often pointed in his direction. She shook her head gently. “Not really, no. The only things I’ve ever found career-wise are raising children, selling chips, and childminding when I was 14. But this —“

“Is dangerous. And stupid,” interrupted Hardy.

“— Matters,” finished Miller.

He stared at her for a long moment. He took a breath. “You know I can’t do this with you.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“If anyone ever pulls me into questioning, I can’t lie for you.”

“I know.”

“I’m not going to be spending my weekends stalking through crime scenes for you.”

She pushed him on the arm. “Hardy, I know. I’m not asking you to give up your life for this. It’s my want. I wish you’d just be a bit less of a wanker about it.”

He turned back to the glass. “Well, as long as we agree,” he said gruffly.

It was good, he knew, to set the verbal boundary first, so he would have a leg to stand on when they inevitably fought later. When they inevitably screamed at each other, anger and worry crescendoing to new heights.

She seemed to forget the conversation the moment it happened. He followed her silently out of the hall as she chattered on about finding someone in payroll. He nearly laughed.

As though he wouldn’t be her partner in this. As though he had a choice in the matter. As though he hadn’t been her partner in all things for a lifetime. As though he didn’t regret the one thing in which he wasn’t.

\--

Hardy squinted at the paperwork through his reading glasses. In an incredulous voice, he said, “You named your fake detective agency ‘Psych’? As in ‘we got you’?”

“As in ‘psychic,’” she said slowly.

He placed the form on top of the pile and rested his forearms over the table. “You may as well call it, ‘We’re Lying to You and the Police and This is a Crime.’”

“Too long. And we’d never get hired that way.”

\--

She had to explain it to Tom, of course. She came into his room one evening and perched on his bed.

Luckily, it had turned out the police wanted the idea of working with a psychic to stay nearly as low-key as she did. She told him that she had quit her chip shop job and that she was working with the police in a consulting capacity. She said that she knew someone on the force who had recommended her. Someone who knew Grandpa.

If Tom had any misgivings, he didn’t show them. Instead he told her in a clipped voice that he was proud of her. Then he gave her a tight hug. He held on for a moment too long. Miller ruffled his hair and wished that he would grow up slower, that he would hug her like this whenever he needed it. Lord knew she needed it, too.

\--

Miller had never acted in school. She hadn’t seen the appeal. The theatre kids whiled away all of their free time at rehearsals, just so that they could flounce around in costumes in the school auditorium for three nights to the applause of their parents and the jeers of their peers. And then they had always pulled their dramatics off of the stage, too, yelling at each other in the halls and snogging on the moldy couch backstage.

When she had graduated, she had thought that was it. There were things you only got the opportunity to do when you were safely enclosed in the walls of school or some other institution.  
After high school, Hardy left for university, and she stayed in Broadchurch. She thought about enrolling in the Academy, and she didn’t. She worked odd jobs. She met Joe, and she saw a life spread out in front of her, and she heaved a sigh of relief.

And now all that had collapsed. And she was still in Broadchurch. And she was still a mum. But she knew now that the world had far fewer rules than she had ever imagined.

She found she rather liked acting.

Standing in the DI’s office, she rested her fingertips on her temples and fluttered her eyes closed. She never managed to do this part quick enough to miss the wave of second-hand embarrassment that would pass over Hardy’s face. Sometimes, she would play it up just for him, sprinkle in more clues and nonsense words, exaggerate the ghostly timbre of her voice. Today she just hummed.

“The spirits are telling me the suspect had a sister,” she announced finally.

Lassiter glared at her.

Miller’s eyes blinked open and she straightened, lowering her arms and slipping back into her normal voice in an instant. “I think she could be important to the case,” she said. “Have you looked into her?”

“We did, she has an alibi,” interjected DS O’Hara, another American.

Miller shifted her weight onto one leg, placing a hand on her hip. “The spirits didn’t say she did it,” she said. “Just that she’s important.”

Lassiter began, “She’s been out of the country for months, I doubt that she —“

Miller raised a finger to cut him off. “I’m getting something else,” she hurried out. She shut her eyes again, and this time she stumbled backwards and slunk down against the wall for good measure. “I’m seeing… oh, it’s all muddled. But there’s something in her possession, like a — a notebook or a…” she trailed off.

She heard footsteps in front of her as O’Hara turn to Lassiter and said, “We could search her house. It couldn’t hurt.”

“O’Hara, you can’t —" began Lassiter.

Miller held up a hand. “Quiet.”

Silence.

“I’m getting a very distinct aura from this location,” said Miller. “But it’s not her house. It’s somewhere more choatic than that. Lots of voices, all at once.”

“What kind of voices?” cut in Hardy. “Male? Female? Young? Old?”

“Both. But young, I think. Like children.”

“She was a school teacher,” said O’Hara. “We could check her classroom.”

“And you said it was something written down?” said Hardy.

“Yes, but I’m only getting flashes of color now. And numbers.”

“Numbers?” asked O’Hara. “Could it be a calendar?”

At that, Miller grinned, and her eyes snapped open. “Yes, Juliet! That’s just it. The spirits are telling me that something about that calendar is suspicious.”

Lassiter grimaced, but he scrawled something on a notepad on his desk anyway.

She had to stop herself from sticking her tongue out at Hardy when he made a similar face at her while helping her off of the floor. He dropped her hand before she had quite steadied herself, and she found herself bracing a hand on the edge of Lassiter’s desk.

As they left, Lassiter said, “We’ll let you know if we find anything,” in a voice as blandly professional as possible.

O’Hara waved.

As they walked down the station steps, Hardy muttered, “What’s the point of taking that long if you’re going to be so bloody specific? You may as well type it up in a report and leave it on his desk.”  
Miller rolled her eyes. “The point is to solve the crimes, not lead the police on a wild goose chase for evidence we’ve already found.”

“Well, what do the spirits say is going to happen when they realize you’ve ‘sensed’ some evidence you went and had a look at first?”

“You know I don’t read the future, Hardy. It doesn’t work like that.”

Hardy sputtered, “It doesn’t work at all!”

“Well, regardless, the spirits say that now in the present you’re being a knob.”

“That’s what they always say,” he returned. “Can’t they think of something new?”

She looked him up and down. “Hardy,” she said, “don’t be exactly half of an eleven-pound black forest ham.” While he was still processing that new insult, she gestured at his car. (A silly little blue thing from work — Miller rather liked it, but she would never say that to Hardy’s face. She liked to mock him for having something that matched his little blue house.)

“Come on,” she said, “I’m starving.”

\--

Later that night, when Fred and Tom and her dad were all tucked in their rooms, the only light on in the whole rest of the house was a lamp in the kitchen, illuminating the table and Miller’s hands wrapped around a cup of tea.

It was supposed to be just a cuppa before bedtime, preparation for an early morning filled with whatever hell inevitably broke loose when the police actually got round to checking out the sister. But she had been sitting there for several minutes, staring unseeingly at her kitchen, unfeeling as the cup cooled between her palms.

She was thinking of the way Hardy had dropped her hand earlier.

She knew why. For months after he returned to Broadchurch, she had shoved away any physical contact he offered. She couldn’t bear it, to have him treat her with a tenderness he showed no one else, save maybe Daisy. The jokes and insults of their youth were all she could stand.

There had been intimacy in their youth, too, of course. But it had been casual. Unexamined. Taken for granted. In the immediate aftermath of Joe’s arrest, Miller looked at everything in her life as though under a distorted microscope. She noticed everything: every gesture, every look. And no matter what they really were, they always looked like pity.

But time had passed. And if she would never be healed, she was at least scabbed over. She was ready to let Hardy back in. To keep hold of his hand.

Finally, Miller stood and poured the cold tea down the drain. The thing about Hardy, she would have to fix that someday. But not yet.

\--

It wasn’t long before Miller and Hardy were getting called to police stations up and down the coast.

Some of their cases were new, and they worked alongside police investigators. Some were cold cases with files that had long been gathering dust in back rooms.

There were cases that dredged up bad memories. Shattered parents left mourning for victims far too young. Working those cases, she would wake with sobs lodged in her throat and her arms stretched out for someone who wasn’t there, although she could never remember if she had been trying to embrace the figure or shove him away. She assumed that those cases did something similar to Hardy, that they drowned him on dry land.

But the cases that called for psychic intervention weren’t always violent. They were always strange. Which meant that for every case that made Miller cry there were three that made her double over laughing until Hardy awkwardly patted her on the back.

They searched for a missing diamond at a wedding. They sampled different restaurants while investigating the death of a food critic. In one memorable case, they found themselves waist-deep in mud digging for dinosaur bones.

But the things that shocked Miller most about her new job had nothing to do with the cases themselves.

She was shocked, first, by the way she took to the work. Her father had wanted her to be a copper so badly. Her earliest memories were of those quizzes: observe, shut your eyes, remember, remember, remember. He had wanted it so fiercely and trained her so well that he had nearly convinced her that there was nothing else she would ever be able to do. The thought had filled her with such a dry terror that she had latched onto any job that came her way, floundering desperately for some other life on which to cling. When she met Joe, she found that he was easy to hold onto, and she thought that she would never need to let go ever again

And it wasn’t that she didn’t love that life, for all she could no longer look back on it. Being a mother was more than a job ever could be. But all those years, she had ached silently for something to struggle with, to challenge her. She had tried to express that to Joe, but he had never understood. 

_"But this_ is _challenging,"_ he would say, and she wouldn’t have an answer to that.

But with Psych, she saw that there was a middle ground. She was not a copper, chasing after low-level criminals and filing endless papers and living forever in a rut meant for her but carved to someone else’s shape. As a consultant, she chose the cases she wanted to work. She followed no one’s direct orders. And Hardy was there. And it was hard. And she was good at it.

She quickly realized that it was about more than the fact that she saw things that nobody else saw. It was about puzzle solving. It was about being able to fit the pieces into a coherent whole. It was about knowing what to investigate and what to tell the police and when. It was about instinct and rhythm. 

The first time she made a murder board on her bedroom wall she burst into almost joyous giggles. It looked like one of those ones from TV, but it was hers, and she understood every connection.

She was shocked, second, by the way Hardy took to the work. He was skilled in a different way. He didn’t have her eye for detail, but he was excellent at asking questions and noticing the bigger picture. She had wondered for years how a man with no social skills to speak of functioned as a salesman, but watching him interrogate a suspect, she found she understood. He was excellent at holding all the information about the case in his head at once and pulling out just the thing that mattered to the suspect. Maybe he didn’t like people, but he could read them.

Their relationship had always been easy, and their partnership was the same. Miller found that he complimented her, that they accomplished much more together than they ever could apart. But she also found that she just liked having him there, regardless of whether they were making progress in the case. They debated, and they argued, and sometimes they had real fights, and they made each other laugh, and they comforted each other.

Hardy had asked her once, years and years ago, why she hadn’t abandoned him when they had left primary school and things had gotten so much more complicated. When she had found herself a nice, steady group of friends, and he had found nothing of the sort. When she had been rather popular, with her easygoing personality and subtle rebellious streak, and he had been anything but. She had told him the truth, then, though she had inflected it like a joke: she just liked his personality! She liked that he was loyal, and kind, and that if you knew him for long enough you realized he had a sense of humor. They just got on.

When they first started investigating cases, Hardy had made a few displeased noises about Miller introducing him by his real name, always complaining that his real job was going to find out, so Miller made a habit of calling him by increasingly eccentric names around new suspects and witnesses. They day she called him Ghee Buttersnaps with little more than a grunt in acknowledgement, she knew that this was an arrangement she would be comfortable to keep for a very long time.

\--

There was a difference, Miller was quick to specify, between an argument and a fight. It wasn’t a distinction she had particularly made with Joe. Their relationship was sweet and supportive. Vocal disagreement usually made her stew in her own anger or feel guilty for the rest of the day.

A few snapped comments with Joe was the equivalent of a screaming match with Hardy.

She argued with Hardy all day long. She also teased, and mocked, and needled. All her life she had been quick to speak up when she felt someone needed a dressing down, but they usually got angry at her or ignored her completely. Hardy responded to it. He took her suggestions when they were apt and insulted her back when they weren’t. 

(Neither had ever told the other, but both privately thought their arguments were one of the more important parts of their lives. Ever since Joe, and in a more subtle way ever since Miller could remember, there had been an anger threatening to burn her up from the inside. In Hardy, there was a great tiredness. She raged at him, and it calmed her, cooled her flames down to embers, and he raged back, and it gave him the energy to ignite.)

Since the two so easily dispatched small, routine disagreements, if anything was to be termed a true “fight,” it had to be serious. It was usually the result of a simmering resentment, something that went unnoticed, like a stove left on, that burned on and on until suddenly the pot above was boiling over.

It began when Miller nudged his shoulder as they stepped out of the police station and into the sun. “Do you know your face makes this…” she paused, scrunching up her nose, “…this grimace when I get going?”

He gave her a short, considering look before turning away. “That looks nothing like me,” he said. “Besides, I’d think that would be expected.”

“Well, you could play along a little better. What’s it say about me, if my partner’s looking like he wants the Earth to swallow him up any time I receive a divination?”

He grunted. “I’m not an actor, Miller.”

She let out a short laugh. “Well, clearly.”

“Oh, don’t be all dismissive. It’s bad enough I’ve been swept into a lie for you but,” he gestured uselessly with his hands, “this lie.”

“What do you mean, ‘this lie’?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, don’t make us do this now. I didn’t say anything.”

She stopped still on the sidewalk, placing a hand on her hip. “No. Tell me what you meant.”

He stopped a few paces from her and glanced over his shoulder to say, “Nothing! Can we go?”

“Hardy, we don’t do the whole ‘nothing’s wrong’ thing. If something’s bothering you about the job, you better come out and say it.”

He turned fully and threw up his arms in a a gesture of surrender. “I just don’t agree with it, all right? Going around telling people you’re a psychic. It’s —”

“It’s what?” she interrupted. “Wouldn’t want to do anything without Hardy’s take —”

They continued to talk over each other. “It’s low, Miller! These people have lost everything, and you act like their family members are still around somehow —”

“Oi,” she said, “don’t act like I’m some charlatan on the telly telling people I’ll talk to their relatives for a hundred quid —”

Hardy gestured wildly once more. “No, you’re just telling them you’ll solve their murders!”

It was like a slap. The thing was, she realized, he was right. Maybe she had been rather cavalier about the whole matter.

That realization didn’t stop her from snapping back, “I _can_ solve their murders.”

He shrugged helplessly. “So what? You’re still telling them something tha isn’t true. And what about when you can’t? What happens then?” He paused then said in a lowered voice, “Nobody asked for you to do this, Miller. Why do you have to get involved?”

She breathed in through her teeth. Finally, in a voice almost shaking from the effort of maintaining its measured tone, she said, “Are you really standing here telling me that if you could bring peace to another family, you wouldn’t? If you could have cracked Pippa’s case, you wouldn’t have.”

He turned away, toward the crosswalk, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Oh, don’t bring that into it, that’s not what it’s about.” He glanced back at her for a moment before turning away. “I don’t worry about hypotheticals, Miller. I get on with my life as best I can, and I leave solving mysteries to people who’s job it is. Who’ve got training. That’s not me or you.”

She was sure that in another second he intended to keep walking without even glancing over his shoulder, to assume that she was trotting behind. Anger flared within her, that he would think he could just drop something like that like it was the end of the bloody conversation. She wasn’t ready for it to be over, wasn’t ready to leave the fight behind like a puddle on the sidewalk that would evaporate like their fights always did. She marched ahead and planted herself in front of him so that he had to look at her. “It bloody well is me!” she cried

He raised his hands in defense. “Miller —“

“You are not the keeper of me, Alec Hardy,” she said, her voice rising in volume. “You don’t know what it’s like inside my brain. To — to see the things I can see, and now that if you can just put everything together, you can save someone. It’s not my job, it’s a goddamn duty. Because —“ she took one centering breath, blinked away the tears that had formed to burn at her eyes, and continued, “…I’ve tried to turn it off. And it bloody worked. I notice things better than any detective on that entire force, and I didn’t notice a single thing wrong in my own house because I wasn’t looking. And I can’t go back, I can’t make myself look, but I am bloody well done keeping my eyes shut.”

“Ellie…” he started.

“Don’t call me that.” It was a reflex. Softer, she muttered, “You’ve never called me that.” After a moment, she laughed mirthlessly and glanced away. “At least this is better than watching the telly, calling in those stupid tips.”

He didn’t look away from her. “It wasn’t your fault, Miller. I met Joe, he seemed perfectly —”

She cut him off, “Will you ever quit saying that to me? It doesn’t matter if I knew. It matters that I could have saved Danny, and I didn’t, and I will live with that forever. But I can save someone else.” She shook her head. “You don’t have to be around for that part.”

He just stared at her for a moment, an anguished expression on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. It was tentative, like he knew it might be the wrong thing. “For not…”

She waved his words away. “Oh, don’t apologize.” She took a shuddering breath, blinked away the last of the tears. “We don’t do that.”

He shook his head. “You know… you know we all feel that way, don’t you? After I heard, I kept wondering if I could have seen it, even back then. Stopped you from marrying the creep.”

She stepped back beside him, and they resumed walking. They left the fight behind on the sidewalk.

She lightly slapped at his arm. “Don’t go all the way back then. Not like you lived with him, anyway.”

He ignored her. “And with everything that happened… you’re always putting yourself in danger, now. I worry.” He looked doggedly down at his feet.

“You worry?” she demanded. “You’re the one who didn’t get pacemaker surgery for a year. You didn’t even tell me you were ill, just collapsed in my kitchen one day!”

“I don’t see the connection.”

She shook her head fondly. Then, she said, without a trace of bitterness, “You know I meant what I said. You really don’t have to be here for this part. I’d understand.”

“Nah, you need me. Keep you from pissing off any murderers.”

“By what, pissing them off yourself?”

He laughed. “Well, if one of us is going to do it.”

Several moments later, she admitted, “You were right. I should be more careful, what I say. Who I say it to. It’s not right.”

He shrugged.

Several moments after that, without so much as looking in her direction, he grabbed her hand. 

\--

She promised herself that she wouldn’t kiss him until they solved the case.

She could have promised, instead, that if they solved the case, she would kiss him. But that wasn’t quite right. She did not entertain the possibility that the victim’s family would never have justice. She did not entertain the possibility that she and Hardy would never kiss.

Still, it would be better to go about things sensibly. No snogging in the middle of a demanding case. The combination would be doomed to divert their attention from the murders and add a layer of stress over the new relationship. So, she would wait. She could wait.

(She asked Tom about it, of course. If he had said he didn’t want her to, didn’t want another father figure so soon, she would have listened. Would have kept Hardy her best mate and partner and never burdened him with more. But Tom looked at her and smiled and said that everything would be a whole lot easier if they weren’t always having to dash between her place and his.)

Had Hardy known of her plan, he might have warned her before it happened that she was bound to break her own rule. 

She was sitting next to him in her car. She was flipping through crime scene photos, and he was doing work on the day job he insisted on keeping, memorizing information on a new drug hitting the market. Miller could not explain why her car was the best place for either of these things. They were in front of his house. It would have been easy to go inside, stay for a cuppa, work next to him at the kitchen table.

Only it wouldn’t have been. She knew that if they walked inside at that moment, and sat down, and drank tea, then no more work would get done. So she was stuck halfway between things. If she went inside, she would have to leave work behind, and if she drove home, she would have to leave him behind. So she chose neither, and they worked in companionable silence until he started to doze off.

After a minute, he started awake. He regretfully collected his papers and pushed himself up to open the car door.

She caught him before he could leave, a slight tug on his sleeve. He started to turn back to her with surprise in his eyes, but before he could say a thing she was resting her hand on his jaw and tilting it back toward her, away from the body already prepared to exit. The kiss was soft, chaste. More suited to the resolution of a slightly awkward first date than to two people who had known each other all their lives. It was over in a moment, really. She pulled away and patted his cheek twice. 

“Go to bed.”

He stared at her for a long moment, slightly incredulous, before he leaned in and kissed her again. Still gentle. Miller wondered if perhaps this _was the resolution_ of a slightly awkward first date.

He was grinning when he pulled away, and she was beaming, but all she said was, “Well, get on with it. Got an early morning.” She waved at the passenger side door.

Through a smile, he grouched, “You’re one for romance, aren’t you, Miller?” Nonetheless, he climbed out of the car.

She watched him walk inside. Then she drove home and kept working.

\--

It felt like it had been a long time coming and like it was very new.

As kids, everyone had made their jokes. Her mum and Hardy’s mum sipping tea in the kitchen and watching her brain him with a plush dolphin. They’d giggle quietly. “Got him wrapped around her finger,” one would say. 

Then his dad would walk in and yell, “When’s the wedding?” with none of the same subtlety.

(She’d always mocked Hardy, even decades later, for the pronounced Scottish accent he’d developed, even living in Broadchurch. She thinks it’s because for his whole childhood he only ever talked to his parents and her. And he would always reply that that did make sense, as he wouldn’t have wanted to copy anything from her.)

She had hated those jokes, and so had he. If they ever played House, she made sure he was the Grandpa. Or the Mailman.

The adults didn’t understand them, anyway, she always thought. They called them Ellie and Alec, but she called him Hardy because he liked it better, and he called her Stevens because she didn’t.

She hadn’t even wanted him when they were teenagers, when for several drawn-out years she found she wanted to snog anything that moved. They did it once, drunkenly, at Laura Thornton’s 17th birthday party, alone on the ratty basement sofa. Miller pulled back first, and then they both burst into peals of laughter.

“Shouldn’t have done that!” he said, as close to gleeful as he ever got.

“Like… kissing…!” she got out through her laughs, “the old… family furniture or something!” And then they drunk some more, eventually passing out next to each other on Laura’s scratchy carpeting.

In the morning, Laura kicked them out, and Miller drove him home, and then they didn’t talk for a week, which was near a record at that time, excluding holidays. The streak ended when Hardy appeared at her door and asked for a lift to the movies. Then they didn’t talk about it again for years.

And they grew up, and she met Joe, and he made her feel the way Hardy never did. Excited and nervous instead of warm and familiar. Around Hardy, she only ever felt like Ellie, like Stevens, but around Joe, she felt like something new entirely. She felt like she was inside herself watching herself. She was something to be admired, something to be romanced. It was an extra layer of work, being seen by him, and it was work for which Hardy had never asked. But she found it was work she rather liked doing.

They married, and Hardy started calling her Miller. Joe called her Ellie, most of the time, but if he ever used her surname it was a teasing “Mrs. Miller.”

By that time, Hardy had moved to Sandbrooke and met Tess. It happened by chance. He was pitching a product at a local hospital where she was meeting with a victim. Miller heard all about from miles and miles away and felt a great sense of comfort due to his happiness.

She visited brand-new Daisy, and he visited brand-new Tom and ten years later brand-new Fred, but they kept their lives geographically distant for the most part. Every once in a while she suggested he visit home, and he pretended to consider it. She knew he had bad memories of Broadchurch. Things she had been too young to understand but which she understood more and more in retrospective pieces. She made herself content with letters and phone calls.

She often wondered if Tess cared. Tess always denied it, but there was a certain chilliness from her when they would meet, as though she was determined to keep a distance. The official reason for the divorce was Tess’ infidelity, and the marriage had truly cracked under the lingering pressure of the moment Hardy pulled Pippa Gillespie’s body out of the river. But Miller couldn’t help but wonder if things would have turned out differently if Hardy could have sought more comfort from the woman next to him than from her own voice through the phone.

She had always been so grateful that Joe didn’t misinterpret things, that he understood. Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe he thought she wanted to shag Alec Hardy the same way the rest of the world did. Maybe he let it slide because her alleged secret desires were so much tamer than his own. It made her shudder, now, to imagine that he thought they were on the same level. That it had taken two to break that marriage.

Hardy had visited after Joe’s arrest. He had stayed for over a month until he couldn’t justify the distance from Daisy any longer. But six months later he was back, Daisy in tow. She got into some trouble, he told her. He said he thought it might do her some good to bring her home.

She hadn’t even wanted to kiss him then. She was an open wound, and his friendship, a well she had drawn from for as long as she could remember, was what she needed. Not another man. Not that.

But now she had gone and proven everybody right. She had made those past versions of Ellie, so resolute in their denial, look foolish. 

No matter. She knew the truth: she hadn’t wanted him then, she wanted him now. At some point in her life, long before they had started looking for clues and talking to suspects, they had become partners. And at this point in her life, that was the most romantic thing she could imagine.

\--

The fight built for weeks like a monsoon battering against the walls of a fragile oceanside house.

To start with, it was good. For weeks, it was good.

They solved the case.

Sitting together, afterwards, in Miller’s car, they exchanged relieved smiles. “I’ll take you home,” she said.

He nodded. “Right.”

They exchanged looks again after she parked in front of his house. She watched as a nervous expression came over his face. His tongue flicked down to lick his bottom lip. Her stomach flipped in response, and she wondered if she looked just as scared, wide eyed, hands too tight on the steering wheel she had yet to let go of.

“I think we ought to talk,” she said, at the same time he said:

“So, uh, have you heard about Pluto?”

There was silence for one crystalline moment before she exploded into laughter and then only another moment before he joined in. “I never,” she choked out, “want to hear the end of that chat-up line!”

They laughed for what felt like ages more, and then he rested his hand on top of hers on the steering wheel, and she looked at him, and it was like she had never really looked at him before, not once in 40 years. They went inside.

They took on more cases, solved some and got beat to others. They kissed more in the car, and at his place, and at hers. They held hands at the particularly greusome crime scenes. They had family dinners, and Daisy and Tom rolled their eyes at them in just the same way.

Then Hardy got offered a promotion, and it all went to shit.

\--

“They told me I could have a week to think about it.”

“I don’t like the idea of it,” Miller replied slowly. She tore the crust off of her toast absentmindedly.

It was well past dinner, and the kids were in their rooms. But she and Hardy were parked at the kitchen table. She didn’t see them leaving any time soon.

“It pays better,” he said with a shrug. “No more cold calling for sales or driving around to hospitals either. You know I can’t stand talking to clients.”

Miller hummed. “It really is amazing they’re offering you a promotion at all.”

It was an empty insult. They both knew he was good at his job.

…Or had been. His work had no doubt been slipping since he had gotten distracted by Psych. Miller privately wondered if the point of the job offer was to sway him away from the moonlighting job he would never actually admit to having.

Miller studied the checkered print of the tablecloth. “So why not just take it then?”

“Well, it would take me away from Psych, for one. Not quite so easy to sneak away when you’re in meetings with the company all day and can’t just check things off a list. And I’d be away more. Business trips.”

“So you don’t want to take it then.”

“I didn’t say that. I just wanted to see what you thought.”

“It’s _your_ job. I don’t know why it matters what I think.”

“Because we’re…” he looked around helplessly, “partners. Or whatever.”

“Well,” she said placidly, finally looking at him, “not if you take this job.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?” she demanded.

“Make this all… personal. Like I’m betraying you just by thinking about this. You know I’ve always insisted on keeping this job. And I never said I’d work for Psych officially.”

She laughed shortly. “Oh, yeah, because there’s nothing personal about this at all. And I don’t remember there being anything unofficial about it yesterday when you were half up to your knees in mud at that crime scene. You want to stop taking credit, then? Since you don’t help ‘officially’?”

His hand was extended halfway across the table, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to grab hers or not. “Ellie…”

“Don’t call me that! Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you sometimes.”

He sighed heavily. “Miller. I just don’t think it’s realistic to —"

She crossed her arms. “Don’t come in now saying it’s unrealistic. You’ve been perfectly happy to run your little exciting detective fantasies with me before. but now that you might have to admit that that’s what you’d rather be doing, I’m just some naive —“

“Stop putting words in my mouth —"

She interrupted him by scraping her chair loudly against the floor as she pushed away from the table. She stood up. “Fine,” she said. “Take the job for all I care. It’s obviously what you want, anyway.” She left him at the table. When he joined her in the bedroom nearly an hour later, she pretended to be long asleep. 

\--

Miller went through her morning routine without so much as looking in his direction. She went to work and largely failed to put the argument out of her head.

She was in a public garden, just sitting down on a stone bench to interview a robbery suspect when Hardy came screeching into the lot in his stupid work car. Her words trailed off as she watched him climb out and jog across the grass, tie flapping in the wind.

“Idiot,” she muttered fondly.

She ignored the questioning look the suspect gave her.

Hardy finally reached them and jerked to a halt in front of the bench, somewhat out of breath. He rested his hands on his knees. “Ovaltine Jenkins,” he said, directing a nod at the suspect. “Gonna have to borrow Miller for a second.”

The suspect opened her mouth to speak only to close it again in an instant when Hardy grabbed Miller’s hand, pulled her up from the bench, and pulled her along until they had rounded a hedge.

The second Miller was convinced that they were out of earshot and neatly concealed, she dropped his hand. “What are you doing?” Miller snapped. “I’m rather in the middle of something!”

He threw his hands into the air. With the air of someone saying something much more aggressive, he yelled, “I quit my job!”

She gave him a funny look. “What on Earth did you do that for?”

He squinted at her like was a particularly confusing puzzle. Like she was a crossword answer that he knew was correct even though it didn’t fit into the boxes. “You didn’t want me to take the promotion,” he said.

She pointed accusingly at him. “That doesn’t mean you had to up and leave!” She let out a little laugh. Genuine, this time. “I mean, gosh, what’d you do that for?”

“I —" He took a breath, and in a more normal tone, said, “I don’t want to work there, Miller. It’s awful, you know it’s awful.” He began pacing back and forth across the lawn. “It’s boring and simple, and I’ve got the worst office mates in the world. And no offense to your acting skills, but I’m pretty sure not one person on the force believes you’re a psychic any more than I do. And if they don’t care you’re lying, why should I?”

He sounded like he was talking to himself at this point. Miller considered butting in, but she rather wanted to see where his speech lead him. If he got bothered enough, it might wrap back around to something she could be angry about.

Finally, he paused in front of her, hands on his hips. “I want to do this, Miller. I want to solve crimes with my best friend for as long as the Broadchurch police department is willing to sign checks and look the other way, and then I want to go home and raise our family together, and then I want to come back and do it all again. And I don’t want to sell any more bloody pharmaceuticals.”

She grinned at him, a wide, radiant smile. “Best friend, huh?”

He frowned. “That’s all you got from that? We’ve been best friends since we were five years old. Don’t say it like it’s a surprise.”

“It’s not,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. “It’s just nice to hear you say it.”

Hardy held on. Together, they started walking back the way they came.

“What about ‘I love you’?” he tried.

“Also not a surprise.”

He sounded indignant. “It wasn’t meant to be a surprise.”

“Well. I do, too.” After a moment, as though it was just occurring to her, she said, “You’re sure you want this?”

“If I didn’t want this, I wouldn’t be doing it now.”

“Good point.” After a moment, she added, “You’ll have to help me track that suspect down again. There’s no way she hasn’t left.”

He gave her his own small smile. “Nothing we can’t handle, eh, Miller?”

She bumped his shoulder affectionately.

\--

“Are you and Mr. Hardy seeing each other?” the Broadchurch Police Department Superintendent asked one day, peering at Miller over a paid of reading glasses slipping down her face. She sounded more curious than anything else.

“I — yes,” answered Miller. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

“No,” said the Super. “You’re not technically my employees anyway. Besides,” she glanced downward and flipped a page in the binder she was looking through, “hardly the most important thing we let you get away with around here, is it?”

Miller felt her face heat up. “No, ma’am.”

The Super smiled at her as she gestured toward the door.

\--

Years ago, when everything fell apart, Miller had collapsed to her bathroom tile and wondered desperately how she was supposed to survive in a world that could change so swiftly and so cruelly.

She still wondered that, sometimes. But she knew also that sometimes the world was strange in lovely, unexpected, gentle ways.

She couldn’t really talk to spirits, but on the off chance they could really hear her, she offered them a small thanks.

**Author's Note:**

> FIC FAQ:
> 
> Q: "Why are Lassiter and Juliet in this fic? They didn't do anything."  
> A: I think it's funny that unlike Shawn and Gus Miller and Hardy emphatically do not want more friends, so the relationship never develops.
> 
> Q: "How did Hardy know Miller was at that garden?"  
> A: He's a psychic.
> 
> You can find me at cometlesbian.tumblr.com.
> 
> Title from the Psych theme song, "I Know You Know" by The Friendly Indians.


End file.
